First African female billionaire is daddy’s little ‘princess’
THE CLUE was in the wedding. When Angola’s Isabel dos Santos married a Congolese art collector in 2003, there were reports that a choir was flown in from Belgium and two chartered planes delivered food from France. African presidents were among the 100 guests at the extravaganza, which cost an estimated US$4 million ($4.77m).
Evidently, dos Santos was a woman of means. Just how high her fortune has soared in the subsequent decade has now been revealed by United States financial magazine Forbes, which has named her as Africa’s first female billionaire.
Critics have been quick, however, to dismiss the 40-year-old as a role model for either Africans or women.
She is the eldest daughter of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the continent’s second-longest-serving leader, at 33 years, and an autocrat accused of enriching his family at the expense of ordinary Angolans. His daughter is sometimes referred to derisively as ‘‘the princess’’.
Forbes found that Isabel dos Santos’ shares in several Portuguese firms, including a cable television company and an Angolan bank, put her on the billionaires’ list for the first time. Most of Angola’s population live on about US$2 a day.
Dos Santos was born to the president’s first wife, Tatiana Kukanova, in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he was studying at the time. As the child of a guerrilla fighting for Angolan independence from Portugal, she had few prospects of fabulous wealth.
Her father became president in 1979, and Dos Santos and her divorced mother eventually moved to London, where she studied electrical engineering and business management at King’s College London.
Back in Angola, aged 24, her first business venture was a restaurant in the capital, Luanda, called Miami Beach. Journalist and anti- corruption campaigner Rafael Marques de Morais said it was not a success.
‘‘Then she set up a garbage collection business, and it didn’t go anywhere. I have a list of her failed ventures.’’
The state-owned newspaper Jornal de Angola awarded her the title of entrepreneur of the year for 2012.
De Morais believes dos Santos is no feminist icon. ‘‘Most of her businesses in Angola are approved and transferred by her father, the president.’’
He said the investments in Portugal were initially made by state firm Sonangol, which manages Angola’s oil and gas reserves, with Dos Santos receiving shares.
Anti-corruption organisation Transparency International recently ranked Angola 168th out of 178 countries in its corruption perception index.
Dos Santos speaks several languages but never talks to the media.